Windscale Fall-out
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-03-24Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 6 →
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READERS may have missed newspaper accounts of a recent repoit by the National Radiological Protection Board (the government agency which oversees all aspects of radioactivity and safety).
The report, into the long term effects of the famous fire at Windscale in 1957 caused a lot of embarassment at the Sizewell Public Enquiry, because it estimated that, far from having no serious effect on people's health, the radioactive fall-out in Cumbria which resulted from the fire may have caused up to 260 cancers of the thyroid gland with some 13 deaths!
The Windscale fire caused the release of clouds of radioactive lodine-131 (the ordinary non-radioactive form of lodine is Iodine-127). Now in absolute terms, Iodine-131 is not very dangerous. It breaks down very fast and is virtually all gone in a few weeks.
Unfortunately, it is concentrated by the human body into the thyroid gland, where it is incorporated into thyroid hormone, which controls the body's metabolism, and some aspects of growth and development.
So a small amount of radioactivity spread throughout the whole body can become a relatively large amount when concentrated into a small gland at the base of the neck. takes decades to appear, some of those exposed in 1957 (namely children in the northern counties) may still be at risk.
How come it has taken 26 years for this report to come out? British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. used a much lower estimate of the radiation released by the fire, and also instigated the pouring away of milk from cows grazing across 500 square kilometres of Cumbrian farmland. At the time BNFL said they were 'erring wildly on the cautious side' but according to the NRPB they missed about 88% at the Iodine-131!